Saturday, February 18, 2012

In this episode I take you along as my flying buddy Dave Torrente and I fly the up the Hudson River on what is known as the City Tour.

We transversed the New York Class B Airspace Hudson River Exclusion Special Flight Rules Area (SFRA), flying northbound with Manhattan on our right and NJ on our left.

This is another episode in my series on things that a pilot can do besides the $100 hamburger after receiving his or her PPL.

What you will hear is the cockpit audio as we flew from HWV along the south shore of LI, past the rockaways and Coney Island, up and over the Verrazano bridge, past ground zero where we saw the new 9/11 memorials and freedom tour, past governor’s island and the statue of liberty. We continued up the Hudson past the Intrepid with the Concord on its deck, past Yankee stadium, over the GWB to the Alpine tower which marks the end of the exclusion.

The cockpit audio is pretty much unchanged. I did remove some dead air but the running time is pretty close to the actual time of the flight. I did break into the audio with some comments, but I want the listeners to experience what it would be like to fly the New York Class B Airspace Hudson River Exclusion Special Flight Rules Area (SFRA).

So what is the SFRA? The exclusion is airspace that has been carved out between EWR, LGA and JFK airspace and goes up the Hudson and east river.

Up until 2009 it was known as the Hudson River Class B exclusion and the rules of the road were not mandatory. On November 19, 2009 the FAA issued an amendment to Part 93 which established a Special Flight Rules Area (SFRA) and defined operational procedures for pilots within the SFRA. This made the rules of the road such as where to fly, the altitude to fly, the speed to fly at and what and where to communicate became mandatory. This came about after a mid-air collision in 2008 between a fixed wing aircraft and a helicopter.

What I hope that everyone takes away from this podcast, is that if you prepare correctly, follow the rules and fly the airplane, you can easily handle flying near and through some of the busiest airspace in the world. A low time or high time pilot can add flying the Hudson Corridor as one of the things that can be done after getting his or her certificate.

A shoutout to Dave Torrente (@DJTorrente). Every flight I take with Dave is fun. At least this time we were able to complete the flight and share it with a student pilot. Our next planned flight is back up to KASH for the UCAP meetup on February 25.

I am glad you liked it. Please take the FAA Safety course New York City Special Flight Rules Area (SFRA) before you go. It will teach the proper procedures on flying through the SFRA.More importantly, it will help you fly fly safely through the busy airspace.

Dave, you are too hard on yourself. The one critique I got was from @Captain_Ron (Ron Klutts) about which direction to land when landing on a road in an emergency. I think this topic warrants a podcast.

Great Podcast! I am a lifelong geography geek plus a newer av. Geek so this episode was great. I enjoyed the talk about the sights to be seen along the way. Also, I love hearing ATC comm. so it was neat hearing the variety of Freqs. Used. CTAF, TRACON, Hudson CTAF, JFK Tower.